


Syntax

by Silvermoonphantom



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Common sense saves the day, Gen, Hey kids wanna learn about genetics, Kaminoans (Star Wars), cloning, real science
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28582485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvermoonphantom/pseuds/Silvermoonphantom
Summary: Sre Len was a Kaminoan technical officer - the last line of defense between the final product (clone bio chips) and programming errors.This list of orders.... these Clone Protocols-Made no void-damned sense
Comments: 14
Kudos: 65
Collections: Common sense saves the day





	Syntax

Kaminoan programmer Sre Len was nothing if not meticulous about her work. 

Code was a delicate, fickle thing. 

Even beyond the Boolean “if;then” logic that ran most programming languages droids ran on, coding bio-chips to alter hormonal function or induce specific behaviors was  _ incredibly  _ tricky to write correctly. One only had the gene expression to work through, after all.   
  
A grand symphony of molecules that could turn genes on or off, called epigenetic markers.

While droids had circuitry and programming that was hard-coded from the onset, biological systems were constantly adapting, mutating. 

A program that could work around that natural change and adapt to random shift in biological function was despairingly complex to read, let alone write. It was half organic itself, encoded in a custom-built supercell that could integrate into any tissue as a sort of bio-chip.

Said bio-chip was capable of storing information, tracking current epigenetic patterns, and even generating epigenetic-tweaking viruses with the RNA fragment library it had stored. 

If an epigenetic marker was in the wrong spot - turning on the wrong gene and making a protein fold the wrong way - it could literally kill the clone. 

The code controlling that bio-chip had to be _perfect._ You didn’t want something like a syntax error to get multiplied a billion times.

After early disasters, Sre Len was proudly one of the very few programmers on Kamino who had  _ never _ allowed a language or syntax error make it to final production. 

So, she found herself recently promoted as a technical officer to the newly commissioned Mandalorian-Jedi Army. It wasn’t called that, of course. It had a proper name, but Sre Len found it darkly, sickly ironic that the Jedi’s custom-cloned troopers all used the biological Original straight from a culture they’d all but helped wipe out. 

Nothing like seeing your brother’s face in your enemy’s army to really put a nail in why you hate someone. 

But, politics wasn’t what had Sre Len gnawing on the end of her stylus. 

No, it was the  _ coding errors _ glaring up at her that had her so incredulous.

The code had been dictated by the client, but whoever drafted this version of the code needed some rather violent percussive maintenance to fix whatever bantha-brained screw had wiggled loose. 

A Directive to follow orders? Reasonable, the clones had a Mandalorian as their original. But why hard-code it as a specific instance instead of a general instinct?

Authority and hierarchy outlines? An army needed to know exactly how leadership fell, but that was something anyone could just... learn. 

They’d already gone through the massive trouble of customizing their genome itself. Why repeat the message in the epigenome?

Of course, none of these commands were written in plain Basic. It had been translated from Basic to Kaminoan to K-Dex-III, the programming language used in the bio-chip supercells to coordinate processing, analysis, RNA replication to keep the epigenetic profile where they wanted it via targeted gene silencing or expression... 

Then all that was outlined again in Kaminoan and Basic in the notes below each order.   
  


She swore she had to be misreading some of these. 

Order 34: capture of a single wanted individual through mass arrest and threatened execution of the civilian population. 

34.1: suppression of communications 

34.2: dealing with civilian casualties 

The Jedi would never.  


Order 65 and 66 contradicted each other, first establishing a Chancellor after the Supreme Commander’s removal as a contingency, and the second said to obey the Supreme Commander, but only if they were also the Chancellor! 

Parentheses changed meaning, you sheb-brained dry-eyed  _ idiot _ of a programmer! 

“Identifies Jedi as traitors, and therefore subject to execution-“ she murmured the outline to herself, double-checked plurals in her memory, in the code, then on a holonet translator just to be sure. 

Jedi was both singular and plural. 

The code used the plural indicative.

All Jedi would be branded traitors and, had this order gone through and accidentally activated… 

Well.

Mass suicide by clone was certainly one way to go down. 

Besides, didn’t the Republic have laws about traitors that included a fair trial and substantiated evidence? Just killing someone after a betrayal didn’t seem accurate to the laws they followed. Maybe in a personal vendetta on an outer rim world, but not in the heart of the republic.

Not by the Jedi. 

And it went on!   


Oceans only knew why anyone wanted to hard-program physically throwing their own equipment away on command into a clone!

Blowing their own brains out en-masse?!  What kind of idiot- 

Kriffing hell.

Sre Len sat up with an abrupt realization.  
Someone lied on their fluency levels, there was NO way some of these commands were accurate. 

Sure, the translated summaries matched how the code had been written, but it made no sense! No one could code so badly, unless there was a huge error in understanding. 

Sre Len took a slow breath, tilted her head up to the misty skies beyond the bubble-curving window that bracketed her office.

Clients weren’t idiots. 

…

Well, no, they totally were. 

But the Jedi in particular were well known to dislike wasting resources, wasting life. If Sre Len was mildly shocked they’d ordered clones, she’d be downright flummoxed to hear they included an order for mass-suicide-by-clone in the inhibitor chips. 

So. 

Something was amiss. 

The easiest explanation was translation error. 

As much as the Jedi were known to hate wasting life, they were even more known for  _ never speaking straightforwardly _ .

She’d heard they had hundreds of years to master the art of talking circles and saying nothing at all, or saying a few words and meaning an ocean’s wide belly full of  _ communication.  _

Kaminoans - especially those whose Basic was not quite completely fluent - tended to be overly literal. Overly logical. It was something you needed cultural training for, to look for hidden meanings and implications between words said and not-said. If you weren’t on top of your language game, and a Jedi wanted to be particularly circuitous, she didn’t doubt a misunderstanding of this magnitude could occur. 

Sre Len knocked her forehead gently against the domed transparisteel with a soft thunk. She watched the misty skies drizzle and gather new drops, which then lumped together and flowed down. 

A few small translation errors could quickly become BIG translation errors - especially when routed through hormones and instincts. 

She could program a bird to build a nest in the shape of an hourglass. Could make a Bantha only ever walk backwards. 

But it would also be  _ her _ neck on the line if someone gave an order and accidentally triggered a sudden-death scenario. She was the last line of defense for bad code getting into the final project. 

Lightsaber decapitation was a fast death, she heard. 

Sre Len shivered, and slid back into the seat of her consol. She took a deep breath. Considered the first Order that seemed out of place. 

Checked the calendar. 

Still had a local week before the first clones were developed enough for Implanting. 

It might take some some sleepless nights, but she’s been through worse for less important projects. 

  
  


Sre Lan cracked her fingers, rested them like a gentle prayer through the hovering light of her holographic keyboard.

She had some code re-write. 

The first thing she  recognized with this shoddy code job was that every single order had been hard-coded. Written in an unyielding script that acted like a triggered trauma response on the body. 

The program would activate, FORCE action through a cocktail of fear, anger, and the brain restructuring that had been developed after examining patients with PTSD.

Just clog their brains with enough klaxons saying “do this! This is urgent! This is unavoidable! This is right!” And of course you’d get conscious awareness to shut down and obey - being overwhelmed like that was certainly a way to get things done. 

But Sre Len put that at the top of her list on things to fix. 

That’s not how bodies WORK. 

You’ll BREAK them! 

All orders should be stored in the brain, with the chip as a backup in case of localized damage.

They should be  _ instincts _ not  _ triggers _ . 

Like a swallow knows to scoop mud instead of sand when building a nest. How it knows how broad the dome should be, and in what shape it should be sculpted. How long to let each layer dry. It  _ just knows  _ _ because epigenetics inform it how.  _ And it  _ follows _ those instincts - but it won’t blindly obey! It can still discern polluted mud, or halt production when a predator is nearby. 

Bio-brains just aren’t meant for hard-coded overrides. The very act of experiencing that overhwleming triggered response can cause trauma that re-writes certain epigenetic patterns, thus changing the whole delicate balance of gene expression! The stress from an ‘Order’ like that would damage the clone’s mental and physical functions each time one was enacted! With over a hundred codes that looked like they were intended for everyday situations… No, the clones would  _ break _ under that sort of repeated stress. 

First, she needed to establish a hierarchy of the “Orders” 

Which ones can be active at all times as instincts.

Which actually need that hard-code override. 

In that second column, Sre Len wote ‘none of them’ and circled it emphatically. 

Got that out of the way. 

Next, which ones were necessary during daily life, and which were situational? 

She immediately scrapped several of the codes that messily outlined taking civilian hostages, disposing of bodies without consideration to local resources. She’d be amused and incredulous if someone earnestly tried starting a body pyre in the ever-raining atmosphere here on Kamino, and plenty of planets had restricting environments like this. 

Not to mention, it so wildly contrasted with known Jedi ideals. There was “war” as an excuse for shady business, then there was flat out war crimes.   
  
if they wanted tactics to apprehend specific, hypersensitive individuals, she could ask them their regular protocols and have someone else tell Fett to tweak his training.   
  


Trashed the order specifying Chancellor vs Supreme Commander in the case of betrayal. 

That was also something a clone could  _ learn and remember _ . It didn’t need to be hardwired. Voids, only the Command-ranked clones even needed to know it anyway. 

She felt a flash of pity for whoever wrote this. 

Still dumped it in the virtual trash bin. The animated “swish” of files being queued for deletion blinked happily at her. 

There was no need to hardcode basic hierarchies and risk a cascading trauma response when politicians did something dumb like create a new position or title. 

They were already loyal. 

Hard coding like this - she deleted another swathe - was like trying to code a screen to color every individual pixel by hand to make a picture of an orange, instead of letting the computer understand you want an orange and giving it a database of pre-made orange pictures to display.

Brains could LEARN and ADAPT in a way that artificial intelligence still hadn’t managed. There was an element of LIFE that came from those mutations and environmental responses. 

To write instincts like this. To write Commands and Protocols, one had to inscribe epigenetic markers onto the DNA. 

They built in the genes for loyalty and discipline, but it was the markers that kept a gene active or not. 

It was the markers - the Methylation - that let her shape how a bird built its nest, or how a Bantha thought it ought to walk. 

Each gene could control an aspect of that living thing. From the rate of cellular aging, to their sense of taste, to how strongly their body remembered a nutritional deficiency during gestation and would thus pack on the pounds during adulthood in anticipation. 

The tricky bit was that epigenetic markers were changeable. If someone fed the clones poorly, their epigenome would remember. A geneticist would have to correct that change. 

There were ways to inject manufactured viruses into their system, to disseminate RNA fragments that could activate or silence genes in place of methylation. But, it took time. It took resources and funding away from making a new clone.

No, it was better to give them the perfect environment to flourish, from the start. 

Regular excitement and play without traumatic stress. 

Emotional connection and community to fellows. 

Proper nutrition, with supplements to foster additional bioavailability and uptake.

Regular exercise. 

No environmental pollutants. 

No access to artificial chemical stimulants or depressants. 

Sre Len paused, squinted at a bit of code. 

Looked down at the summary. 

No, she read that correctly. 

“Good troopers follow orders” 

So, If someone had developed poor self esteem, then they’d be dead set on NOT following orders. If good troopers follow orders then self-identified “bad” troopers disobey. 

She scoffed at the screen. 

She was getting someone fired for this. 

How in the deep voids did it even get to her desk. 

Did they think she didn’t read anything? 

Just because no one had offered her code with errors big enough to make a fuss about instead of just quietly fixing it and sending it along didn’t mean she  _ wasn’t reading the code! _

There were others that stood out as impossible, and she slowly - methodically - worked through them.

An alarm on her comm beeped. 

Already checkout time. 

She sent a message directly to the project representative, absently requesting a follow-up meeting to confirm the code content. If she could get them to  _ explain again _ without sounding incompetent, the project might get done on time.

Sre Len stood, stretched, and headed back to the dorms for a good night’s rest. 

—

By noon, the Jedi Dooku still hadn’t replied, hadnt even sent a “message received” indication. 

She looked at the pile of scraps she had remaining from the original script. 

Messaged the chain of command to see if anyone had thought to get a recording of that  _ very important meeting where language and context is very important to get right.  _

She could feel the “oh shit” vibes radiate from the long delay in response, and the very short text reply. 

**no one recorded it.**

**The original coder who had received the list of orders was offworld. Dooku couldn’t be reached?**

Sre Len replied; 

He’s not responding. The current code is a disaster. 

**What about Jedi Sifo-Dyas, who commissioned the project?**

Deceased. 

(A very long pause) 

**I’ve included the contact link to the Jedi Temple. Dooku mentioned his master knows about the project, and has lent support - current records show he was trained by Jedi Grandmaster Yoda.**

Sre Len took her sweet time confirming that information before replying back 

thank you

What a mess. 

She hailed the Jedi Temple’s main line. Accuracy and Results were far more valuable than personal pride. Let them think her an idiot. Her code would sing for her, once finished. 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, real science.  
> We can’t quite program as straightforwardly as Sre Len, but we are moving in that direction. 
> 
> Things to google to learn more about the real science I touched on :) 
> 
> For Viral-induced alteration of gene expression.: Herpes Gene Silencing.  
> For Instinct Modification: Maternal Solicitude and Oxytocin.  
> For general info on DNA Methylation controlling gene expression and aging: Epigenetic Methylation Clock
> 
> —  
> As always, comments make dreams come true 🥰


End file.
